Video: H&C, Powers, Taranto on liberals hoping for Cheney’s death

posted at 12:15 pm on February 28, 2007 by Ian

Opinion Journal’s James Taranto and Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers joined Hannity & Colmes to discuss the vitriolic messages praying hoping for the death of Vice President Cheney made on the liberal HuffingtonPost.com. Should the Secret Service investigate these pathetic people like they did when Clinton was President? Hannity and Taranto get into it.

Powers and Colmes claim they receive death threats and explicit messages all the time. I’m sure they do, everyone does. However, can they name one site on the right that has consistently called for the death of a Democratic politician or known for it’s hateful entries and comments? Remember, just one now.

That wasn’t the first time Cheney received death wishes from Huffington Post readers. In 2005, Carmen Sandiego, er, I mean Arianna Huffington tracked Cheney down at a hospital he was being treated at. Arianna demanded to know every little detail about his visit and then blurbed about it at her blog. Like Tuesday’s incident and last Thanksgiving’s post by Hendra, the post also had a ton of comments by those afflicted with Cheney Derangement Syndrome. And like Tuesday’s post, Arianna had to issue a “note on [the] comments.”

By the way, Hannity references The Boss at the end. You’ll just have to watch.

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Powers and Hannity got in a little tiff over this post by Tony Hendra at the Huffington Post calling Cheney’s heart to stop. Hannity was mad because Arianna allowed it, Powers argued Huffington doesn’t queue posts for approval. The point is, Huffington allowed it to stay up, implying she approved the message.

But if we’re going to say that, can we still complain when she takes down the “Cheney should have been killed” comments? Either it’s down the memory hole or it’s not. I’d prefer it was all left up there, for the purposes of history.

But if we’re going to say that, can we still complain when she takes down the “Cheney should have been killed” comments? Either it’s down the memory hole or it’s not. I’d prefer it was all left up there, for the purposes of history.

I see where you’re coming from. Well, just because she approves the message, doesn’t necessarily means she agrees with it. It just shows what kind of people she represents.

JAHerer, I’ve named several specific examples, including a Post by that idiot Hendra. Alec Baldwin has made similar posts. I’m asking for a site on the right that you would go to to find hateful rhetoric.

Not Kirsten’s finest moment. When you have Elizabeth Edwards posting at the sewer known as DU, and when you have miscreants like Kos and Amanda Marcotte and Jane Hamsher being accepted into Democrat strategizing, and when you have a party led by their champion Howard Dean, and when you have Democrat politicians routinely posting at places like Kos, you have a party that has been taken over by the radical left fringe. They show their true colors every day. And they are far more representative of the Democrats and the left than Kirsten is or will be at any point in the near future.

Take this occasion to reflect on the circumstance that Dick Cheney will die, sooner or later. With that thought in mind, get in bed with your beloved and work on a replacement. Here, it will certainly help if your beloved is of the opposite sex.

The point Kirsten and Colmes were trying to make is that it’s not “mainstream Democratic” political like-mindedness. I don’t disagree with that. I also don’t disagree that I find more vitriol on liberal blog posts than I do on conservative posts (ignoring the comment sections). But y’all are missing the bigger point.

Last year there was a proposition to amend the Constitution to ban desecrations of the flag. It failed, and rightly so. In a country where free speech is protected, whose interests are served by placing limitations on opinions? Ignore the discussion on decency, offensive or inflamatory remarks… there is a chasm of difference between asserting an opinion and acting on that opinion, in the legal and the moral sense.

JAHerer, I’ve named several specific examples, including a Post by that idiot Hendra. Alec Baldwin has made similar posts. I’m asking for a site on the right that you would go to to find hateful rhetoric.

Ian on February 28, 2007 at 12:58 PM

How about Ann Coulter:

“We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens’ cream brulee”

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he didn’t go to the New York Times building”

re Clinton, the only question is “whether to impeach or assassinate”

Not anonymous blog posts, worse. From her books and speeches. From someone highlighted in a positive way today, on this very blog.

This blog criticizes Coulter all the time. And you know that, or would if you bothered to look up our posts and link them in your own comments. Do I have to call you lazy again, honora?

Bryan on February 28, 2007 at 1:48 PM

First, I did not look this up on HA. I looked on Media Matters.

Second, the point is that there is the “holy than thou” contention being floated here that wishing horrible stuff to happen to prominent people (like death to Cheney) is somehow the unique province of liberals.

Third, call me what you wish. Do I have to call you obtuse again, Bryan?

And they are far more representative of the Democrats and the left than Kirsten is or will be at any point in the near future.

Bryan on February 28, 2007 at 1:00 PM

Precisely — and it is sad. Mahatma Ghandi once said (loosely quoting — I don’t have his exact words in front of me):

I would be a Christian, if it were not for the other Christians that I know.

I suppose that it would shock you all, if I said:

I would BE a Democrat, if it were not for all the other Democrats that I know.

I remember a time (long ago) when a conservative could actually be a member of the Democratic party.
(Alas, I fear, no more.)

I may have finally found some common ground with Jaherer22 and honora. (Don’t let it go to your heads.) The rhetorical vitriol and pure hatred spews, spills, and runs like a open stream of sewage from both sides of the aisle. I really don’t care if it comes from Ann Coulter, or whether it comes from the commenters/blog participants at the liberal blogs like the Huffington Post. Rude is rude. Mean is mean. Hatred is hatred. Lies and character assasination are exactly that. Conservatives are NOT immune. (If you want to be better than the liberals, you gotta’ walk the talk.)

I sent a congratulatory note of sorts (an e-mail message) to Kirsten Powers last night. NOT because I necessarily agreed with anything she said, but because both Bill O’Reilly (on Monday night) and Sean Hannity (on Tuesday night) yelled at her on national television. Even though I may have agreed with most of what both Bill and Sean had to say, I object strenuously to the WAY in which they said it. (They should apologize.) IMHO, KP WON both exchanges — NOT because she was correct, but because she kept her cool throughout.

Why is SO hard to understand that at least some of us expect the people in our society to conduct themselves in a civilized fashion — displaying some common courtesy towards each other? I will NOT defend conservatives when they misbehave — any more than I’ll defend the posters at HP that say that they want Dick Cheney dead.

Okay, so I am getting WAY too preachy here. I’ll knock it off. I’ll admit that I am guilty of posting some pretty lame and nasty stuff myself. I guess that my point is pretty simple. We can’t beat our enemy by becoming our enemy.

The difference is that we listen to our extremists and laugh or lament. The liberals act on their postings.

When was the last time a conservative stormed a house to attack a liberal, shout down on a college campus an invited speaker, defaced a national monument.

Conservative can see and understand extremism and reject it.

The left embraces it, hire it, dances down the stree with it, votes for it, gives it committee chairs, aligns themselves with it, courts it, and defends it…and now are living with it therfore defined by it, it now is part of their DNA.

I’ll have to agree more with JaHerer and Honora on this one that there are crazy people on both sides of the aisle. And the Coulter example is a GREAT one. The problem is, is that when someone who you agree with politically says something outrageous, you don’t think it’s so outrageous.

Perfect example, Hannity asks KP to name something comparable that the conservatives did during the Clinton years. She brings up the stories of the Clintons murdering people (which I certainly remember…the Clintons were murdering Ron Brown, Vince Foster, etc.), and then Hannity goes, “well, those were allegations being made.” That’s exactly my point! Hannity thinks those are appropriate things to bring up, because that’s his political bent.

Calling for violence against elected, in-office leadership of a nation is lightyears away from snarky comments about other people who do not have such power or have not been given authority by the citizenry to govern.
1) We are at war. Anything like this emboldens the enemy. Free speech comes with an assumption of maturity, that is even if you want to vent your bile, it doesn’t have to be done in public. Do it in private, so that our enemies aren’t able to use it against our nation. The right to free speech in this nation means you cannot be arrested and dragged off a blog or out of your living room, but what happened to being discreet for the greater good?
2) It is very, very clear that those who talk of removing a sitting president and vice president before their normal terms of office expire, and feed the emotions of people to violence, do not at all understand how devastating coups and assassinations are to a nation’s psyche. They do not understand how fragile the rule of law becomes once people break that covenant of trust by upsurping power outside the established system. There is NO reason to talk removal of a president when he has two years to go. It happens in Third World countries when the stresses of presidents for life – thirty years of decaying rule by one man – shatter the entire orderly system of how power is legally accorded to an individual or a congress of indiviudals gathered to govern in behalf of the people.
The Left is engaged in non-stop eroding of normal elective processes. It’s so selfish that the Left can’t wait 24 more months? No! They want to humiliate. But that route is the way to chaos and destruction, the breaking down of the cooperative relationships that we all depend on in our daily lives. An exile Liberian watching the army mutiny in Ivory Coast that overturned a sitting government said, “They are fools. They do not know what’s going to come on their heads for this. It’s only downhill.”

If it would be better if someone were dead, it seems ridiculous not to wish he were dead. Nevertheless, wishing aloud or in print is different from simply wishing, and things that are different are reasonably judged differently. Under the circumstances, I think I’ll be excused for saying that I’m glad Vice President Cheney is still alive and that, given the choice, I’d rather the Americans lose Arianna Huffington than lose him.